Cyrillic alphabets

- updated 2019/02/17 17:55

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Distribution of the Cyrillic script worldwide as of 2008. The dark green shows the countries that use Cyrillic as the one main script; the lighter green those that use Cyrillic alongside another official script. The lightest green formerly did so.

Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School by Saint Clement of Ohrid and Saint Naum and replaced the earlier Glagolithic script developed by the Byzantine theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, in parts of Southeastern Europe and Northern Eurasia, especially those of Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world.

Some of these are illustrated below; for others, and for more detail, see the links. Sounds are transcribed in the IPA. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian ⟨г⟩ is pronounced /v/ in a number of words, an orthographic relic from when they were pronounced/ɡ/ (e.g. его yego 'him/his', is pronounced [jɪˈvo] rather than [jɪˈɡo]).

Spellings of names transliterated into the Roman alphabet may vary, especially й (y/j/i), but also (gh/g/h) and ж (zh/j).

Non-Slavic alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of these alphabets were developed by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural (Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, and Kerashen Tatars) in the 1870s. Later, such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those languages were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script (Mongolian script etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in the late 1930s, all of the Latin alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union were switched to Cyrillic as well (the Baltic Republics were annexed later, and were not affected by this change). The Abkhazian and Ossetian languages were switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, both also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before.

In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to write local languages has often been a politically controversial issue since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule and Russification. Some of Russia's peoples such as the Tatars have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law. A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies—either Roman‐based or returning to a former script.

Unlike the Latin script, which is usually adapted to different languages by adding diacritical marks/supplementary glyphs (such as accents, umlauts, fadas, tildes and cedillas) to standard Roman letters, the Cyrillic script is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. However, in some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.

Common letters

The following table lists the Cyrillic letters which are used in the alphabets of most of the national languages which use a Cyrillic alphabet. Exceptions and additions for particular languages are noted below.

^The soft sign ⟨ь⟩ usually does not represent a sound, but modifies the sound of the preceding letter, indicating palatalization ("softening"), also separates the consonant and the following vowel. Sometimes it does not have phonetic meaning, just orthographic; e.g. Russian туш, tush[tuʂ] 'flourish after a toast'; тушь, tushʹ[tuʂ] 'India ink'. In some languages, a hard sign ⟨ъ⟩ or apostrophe ⟨’⟩ just separates the consonant and the following vowel (бя [bʲa], бья [bʲja], бъя = б’я [bja]).

In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old East Slavic and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, which is still preserved as a distinct vowel in Bulgarian (which represents it with ъ) and Slovene (which is written in the Latin alphabet and writes it as e), but only in some places in the word.

When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with [j]) follows a consonant, the consonant is palatalized. The Hard Sign indicates that this does not happen, and the [j] sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign indicates that the consonant should be palatalized in addition to a [j] preceding the vowel. The Soft Sign also indicates that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatalized. Examples: та ([ta]); тя ([tʲa]); тья ([tʲja]); тъя ([tja]); т (/t/); ть ([tʲ]).

Before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: Іі (replaced by Ии), Ѳѳ (Фита "Fita", replaced by Фф), Ѣѣ (Ять "Yat", replaced by Ее), and Ѵѵ (ижица "Izhitsa", replaced by Ии); these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.

I (І і), also known as the dotted I or decimal I, resembles the Latin letter I. Unlike Russian and Ukrainian, "И" is not used.

Short I (Й й), however, uses the base И glyph.

Short U (Ў ў) is the letter У with a breve and represents /w/, or like the u part of the diphthong in loud. The use of the breve to indicate a semivowel is analogous to the Short I (Й).

A combination of Sh and Ch (ШЧ шч) is used where those familiar only with Russian and or Ukrainian would expect Shcha (Щ щ).

Yery (Ы ы) /ɨ/

E (Э э) /ɛ/

An apostrophe (’) is used to indicate depalatalization[clarification needed] of the preceding consonant. This orthographical symbol used instead of the traditional Cyrillic letter Yer (Ъ), also known as the hard sign.

Ge (Ґ, ґ) appears after He, represents /ɡ/. It looks like He with an "upturn" pointing up from the right side of the top bar. (This letter was not officially used in Soviet Ukraine in 1933—1990, so it may be missing from older Cyrillic fonts.)

Ъ represents the vowel /ɤ/, and is called "ер голям" [ˈɛr ɡoˈljam] ('big er'). In spelling however, Ъ is referred to as /ɤ/ where its official label "ер голям" (used only to refer to Ъ in the alphabet) may cause some confusion. The vowel Ъ /ɤ/ is sometimes approximated to the /ə/ (schwa) sound found in many languages for easier comprehension of its Bulgarian pronunciation for foreigners, but it is actually a back vowel, not a central vowel.[citation needed]

Ь is used on rare occasions (only after a consonant [and] before the vowel "о"), such as in the words 'каньон' (canyon), 'шофьор' (driver), etc. It is called "ер малък" ('small er').

The Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.[2][3]
The Cyrillic script was originally developed in Bulgaria and has been used there (with modifications and exclusion of certain archaic letters via spelling reforms) continuously since then, superseding the previously used Glagolitic alphabet, which was also invented and used there before the Cyrillic alphabet overtook its use as a written script for Bulgarian. The Cyrillic alphabet was then borrowed by neighboring countries (e.g. Serbia and later Romania) and their peoples by the spread of Orthodox Christianity, who later modified it and added/excluded letters from it to better suit the needs of their own language. It was later adapted to write Russian and evolved into the Russian alphabet and the alphabets of many other Slavic (and later non-Slavic) languages.

Serbian

Allowed italic variants of some letters in different languages.

South Slavic Cyrillic alphabets (with the exception of Bulgarian) are generally derived from Serbian Cyrillic. It, and by extension its descendants, differs from the East Slavic ones in that the alphabet has generally been simplified: Letters such as Я, Ю, and Ё, representing /ja/, /ju/, and /jo/ in Russian, respectively, have been removed. Instead, these are represented by the digraphs ⟨ја⟩, ⟨ју⟩, and ⟨јо⟩, respectively. Additionally, the letter Е, representing /je/ in Russian, is instead pronounced /e/ or /ɛ/, with /je/ being represented by ⟨јe⟩. Alphabets based on the Serbian that add new letters often do so by adding an acute accent ⟨´⟩ over an existing letter.

Between Д and E is the letter Dje (Ђ, ђ), which represents /dʑ/, and looks like Tshe, except that the loop of the h curls farther and dips downwards.

Between И and К is the letter Je (Ј, ј), represents /j/, which looks like the Latin letter J.

Between Л and М is the letter Lje (Љ, љ), representing /ʎ/, which looks like a ligature of Л and the Soft Sign.

Between Н and О is the letter Nje (Њ, њ), representing /ɲ/, which looks like a ligature of Н and the Soft Sign.

Between Т and У is the letter Tshe (Ћ, ћ), representing /tɕ/ and looks like a lowercase Latin letter h with a bar. On the uppercase letter, the bar appears at the top; on the lowercase letter, the bar crosses the top at half of the vertical line.

Between Ч and Ш is the letter Dzhe (Џ, џ), representing /dʒ/, which looks like Tse but with the descender moved from the right side of the bottom bar to the middle of the bottom bar.

Ш is the last letter.

Certain letters are handwritten differently [4], as seen in the adjacent image.

Between Ze (З з) and I (И и) is the letter Dze (Ѕ ѕ), which looks like the Latin letter S and represents /d͡z/.

Dje (Ђ ђ) is replaced by Gje (Ѓ ѓ), which represents /ɟ/ (voiced palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents /d͡ʑ/ instead, like Dje. It is written ⟨Ǵ ǵ⟩ in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet.

Tshe (Ћ ћ) is replaced by Kje (Ќ ќ), which represents /c/ (voiceless palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents /t͡ɕ/ instead, like Tshe. It is written ⟨Ḱ ḱ⟩ in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet.

Lje (Љ љ) often represents the consonant cluster /lj/ instead of /ʎ/.

Certain letters are handwritten differently, as seen in the adjacent image [5].

Between Ze (З з) and I (И и) is the letter З́, which represents /ʑ/ (voiced alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written ⟨Ź ź⟩ in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written ⟨Zj zj⟩ or ⟨Žj žj⟩.

Between Es (С с) and Te (Т т) is the letter С́, which represents /ɕ/ (voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written ⟨Ś ś⟩ in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written ⟨Sj sj⟩ or ⟨Šj šj⟩.

The letter Dze (Ѕ ѕ), from Macedonian, is used in scientific literature when representing the /d͡z/ phoneme, although it is not officially part of the alphabet. A Latin equivalent was proposed that looks identical to Ze (З з).

Karelian

The Karelian language was written in the Cyrillic script in various forms until 1940 when publication in Karelian ceased in favor of Finnish, except for Tver Karelian, written in a Latin alphabet. In 1989 publication began again in the other Karelian dialects and Latin alphabets were used, in some cases with the addition of Cyrillic letters such as ь.

Kildin Sámi

Over the last century, the alphabet used to write Kildin Sami has changed three times: from Cyrillic to Latin and back again to Cyrillic. Work on the latest version of the official orthography commenced in 1979. It was officially approved in 1982 and started to be widely used by 1987.

The Cyrillic letters Кк, Пп, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans.

Buryat

The Buryat (буряад) Cyrillic script is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words.

The Buryat Mongolian alphabet

А а

Б б

В в

Г г

Д д

Е е

Ё ё

Ж ж

З з

И и

Й й

Л л

М м

Н н

О о

Ө ө

П п

Р р

С с

Т т

У у

Ү ү

Х х

Һ һ

Ц ц

Ч ч

Ш ш

Ы ы

Ь ь

Э э

Ю ю

Я я

Е е = /jɛ/, /jœ/

Ё ё = /jo/

Ж ж = /dʒ/

Н н = /n-/, /-ŋ/

Ө ө = /œ/

Ү ү = /y/

Һ һ = /h/

Ы ы = /ei/, /iː/

Ю ю = /ju/, /jy/

Kalmyk

The Kalmyk (хальмг) Cyrillic script is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (нөөрин), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (хальмг = /xaʎmaɡ/).

Tatar

Tatar has used Cyrillic since 1939, but the Russian Orthodox Tatar community has used Cyrillic since the 19th century. In 2000 a new Latin alphabet was adopted for Tatar, but it is used generally on the Internet.

The Tatar Cyrillic alphabet

А а

Ә ә

Б б

В в

Г г

Д д

Е е

Ё ё

Ж ж

Җ җ

З з

И и

Й й

К к

Л л

М м

Н н

Ң ң

О о

Ө ө

П п

Р р

С с

Т т

У у

Ү ү

Ф ф

Х х

Һ һ

Ц ц

Ч ч

Ш ш

Щ щ

Ъ ъ

Ы ы

Ь ь

Э э

�� ю

Я я

Ә ә = /æ/

Ң ң = /ŋ/

Ө ө = /œ/

У у = /uw/, /yw/, /w/

Ү ү = /y/

Һ һ = /h/

Җ җ = /ʑ/

The Cyrillic letters Ёё, Цц, Щщ are not used in native Tatar words, but only for Russian loans.

Turkmen

Turkmen, written 1940–1994 exclusively in Cyrillic, since 1994 officially in Roman, but in everyday communication Cyrillic is still used along with Roman script.

Uzbek

From 1941 the Cyrillic script was used exclusively. In 1998 the government has adopted a Latin alphabet to replace it. The deadline for making this transition has however been repeatedly changed, and Cyrillic is still more common. It is not clear that the transition will be made at all.